Tracking Swift migration

10 Sep 2015 Common Swift by JimP1445
The BTO have been involved in tracking the movements of Swifts in response to the alarming declines highlighted by the recent Atlas and to solve the mystery of their wintering grounds. The use of geolocators weighing less than a gram has filled in many gaps in our current knowledge of Swift migration, for example showing that the birds quickly moved south along west coast of Africa in August moving to the Congo basin. Intriguingly, some of the tracked birds also moved further east to the coast of Mozambique later in the year before .
 
A similar project involving Swifts of the far eastern pekinensis population has shown a no less remarkable journey. Fitted with geolocators in Beijing, the birds flew west through the heart of central Asia to stage for several days on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea in Iran. From here, the Swifts moved south across the Arabian peninsula to spend the winter around Namibia and southern Africa. Both projects have involved only a small number of individuals (56 so far) so further geolocator tracking is needed to get a full picture of the migration of these amazing birds.


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